William Henry Seward was among the most important Secretaries of State in United States history, serving under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. One of Lincoln's closest advisors during the Civil War, he helped ensure that Europe did not recognize the Confederacy as a sovereign nation. In 1867, he successfully negotiated the purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million, about two cents an acre. Seward also served two terms as Governor of New York. A memorial statue honoring him was commissioned by the family of Suzanne Geis Kolterman, a lifelong resident of Seward County, for the 150th anniversary of the City of Seward, Seward County, and the State of Nebraska, celebrated in 2017. Sculptor David Rubin depicted Seward gesturing toward the Court House to acknowledge and promote the place of government in a community, a state, and a country. David and Judith Rubin, brother and sister, had created a similar Seward statue for the 150th anniversary of the Treaty of Cession between Secretary Seward and Russian diplomat Edouard de Stoeckl, securing the Russian Territories for the United States of America, now in Juneau, Alaska. In 2016, that Alaska statue, sculpted in New York, traveled through Seward on its way to Juneau, where Seward residents saw it, met David Rubin, and commissioned a second statue for their community. This version differs somewhat from the first: the patina is darker, the head is raised and held at a straighter angle, and there is no treaty, allowing the cape a more graceful and uninterrupted line. The Rubins chose to show Seward with the scar on his jaw, received from the bowie knife of Lewis Paine in an assassination attempt on the same night John Wilkes Booth shot and killed President Abraham Lincoln.